This release marks a milestone for PC-BSD, by moving to the latest FreeBSD 7-Stable and also incorporating the KDE 4.1.1 desktop. Users will immediately notice the improved visual interface that KDE 4.1.1 offers, as well as a large improvement in hardware support and speed from the update to FreeBSD 7-Stable. PC-BSD 7 also offers a large and growing library of self-contained PBI files available for installation, and improvments for other locales on our PBI Directory website. This release also offers new methods of installation, including a DVD, USB and Internet/network install. Note: Here is an interview with the lead developer of PC-BSD.

About the KDE vs GNOME user count, it's bullshit. Xandros or whoever singed deals with various governments for school PC preinstalled software, so theoretically 500 million schoolkids in Nigeria and Brazil use KDE or whatever. Umm... I have my doubts about them still choosing KDE if they had a choice, especially the translations of GNOME tend to be much higher quality (Except for German), and Qt has crappy handling for Asian scripts......

It is not bullshit. At least not here in Brazil. For some strange reason that I cannot quite understand, Slackware - and thus, KDE - used to be very popular here on Brazil (based on what one can see on the Linux-related websites here) before Ubuntu came to rise in popularity.

The leading distros on Brazil - Mandriva and Kurumin - are all KDE based and the localization is for all practical intents and purposes a non-issue as Conectiva had done a heck of a good job already translating Linux to portuguese prior to the Mandriva acquisition. I would say that KDE probably enjoys a better localization here than GNOME.

Kurumin is so popular that has spawned a lot of spin-offs - itself being a Knoppix spin-off - and all of them KDE based. About the only time that we hear about GNOME is because of the Ubuntu hype and occasionally because of a local distro based on Debian called DreamLinux that kinda mixes GNOME's with Mac looks and has been receiving some good reviews, including sites like Linux.com.

Ubuntu is huge where I work: pretty much everyone that I know that uses Linux likes it, except myself (more of a Debian/KDE person) and the odd Fluxbox user here and there. But every time that we see Linux making the headlines here as something intended to be used by the public at large, which is kinda rare still and I haven't seem many personally, it seems to be a large KDE deployment - probably because of the Windows look-and-feel that people keep talking about.

If you believe what the fanboys say on Linux websites, you would be led to believe that everybody and their dogs are using Ubuntu here, as *buntu fanboys tend to be the loudest but make no mistake: it is not nearly as popular as people say it is. KDE probably still has the upper hand here but GNOME is rapidly getting there, due mostly to Ubuntu's success.